Today is the 300th anniversary of the death of Gottfried Leibniz, a man whose work has had a deep influence on what we do here at Wolfram Research. He was born July 1, 1646, in Leipzig, and died November 14, 1716, in Hanover, which was, at the time, part of the Holy Roman Empire. I associate his name most strongly with my time learning calculus, which he invented in parallel with Isaac Newton. But Leibniz was a polymath, and his ideas and influence were much broader than that. He invented binary numbers, the integral sign and an early form of mechanical calculator.

“We’ve worked together for over 9 years, and now we’re finally meeting!”

“Coding in the Wolfram Language is like collaborating with 200 or 300 experts.”

“You can turn financial data into rap music. Instead, how about we turn rap music into financial data?”

As a first-timer from the Wolfram Blog Team attending the Technology Conference, I wanted to share with you some of the highlights for me—making new friends, watching Wolfram Language experts code and seeing what the Wolfram family has been up to around the world this past year.

Introduction

A Mersenne prime is a prime number of the form Mp = 2p – 1, where the exponent p must also be prime. These primes take their name from the French mathematician and religious scholar Marin Mersenne, who produced a list of primes of this form in the first half of the seventeenth century. It has been known since antiquity that the first four of these, M2 = 3, M3 = 7,M5 = 31 and M7 = 127, are prime.

We are constantly surprised by what fascinating applications and topics Wolfram Language experts are writing about, and we’re happy to again share with you some of these amazing authors’ works. With topics ranging from learning to use the Wolfram Language on a Raspberry Pi to a groundbreaking book with a novel approach to calculations, you are bound to find a publication perfect for your interests.

The population of Wolfram Language speakers around the globe has only grown since the language’s inception almost thirty years ago, and we always enjoy discovering users and authors who share their passion for Wolfram technologies in their own languages. So in this post, we are highlighting foreign-language books around the world that utilize Wolfram technologies, from a mathematical toolbox in Japanese to an introduction on bioinformatics from Germany.

Some thoughts for World Metrology Day 2016

Please allow me to introduce myself
I’m a man of precision and science
I’ve been around for a long, long time
Stole many a man’s pound and toise
And I was around when Louis XVI
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that metric rules
Through platinum standards made forever
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name

Introduction and about me

In case you can’t guess: I am Jean-Charles de Borda, sailor, mathematician, scientist, and member of the Académie des Sciences, born on May 4, 1733, in Dax, France. Two weeks ago would have been my 283rd birthday. This is me:

Nearly two hundred years after Friedrich Bessel introduced his eponymous functions, expressions for their derivatives with respect to parameters, valid over the double complex plane, have been found.

In this blog we will show and briefly discuss some formerly unknown derivatives of special functions (primarily Bessel and related functions), and explore the history and current status of differentiation by parameters of hypergeometric and other functions. One of the main formulas found (more details below) is a closed form for the first derivative of one of the most popular special functions, the Bessel function J:

Authors that choose to incorporate Wolfram technologies into their books are practitioners in a variety of STEM fields. Their work is an invaluable resource of information about the application of Mathematica, the Wolfram Language, and other Wolfram technologies for hobbyists, STEM professionals, and students.